Python - Network Interface

Network interface is nothing but interconnection between two hardware equipment or protocol layers in a computer network. A network interface usually has some form of the network address. It is generally a network interface card that does not have any physical existence. It can be implemented in a software interface.

It is difficult to keep track of interface names, status, or any other information related to them when we have multiple interfaces. For this purpose, Python has a library called netifaces which can list the interfaces and their status. The netifaces module is a portable third-party library which enumerates the network interfaces on the local machine. Below is a simple example using python netifaces module giving details of interfaces and their status.

Installation:

pip install netifaces

Implementation of netifaces module for various network operations:

# Import libraries
import netifaces

# Showing gateway list
netifaces.gateways()

# Getting interfaces
interfaces = netifaces.interfaces()

# Showing interfaces
for interface in interfaces:
    print(interface)

# Getting interface info
print(netifaces.ifaddresses(str(interfaces[0])))

# Getting interface status
addrs = netifaces.ifaddresses(str(interfaces[0]))
print(addrs[netifaces.AF_INET])
print(addrs[netifaces.AF_LINK])

Output: